Hard Exit, page 7
I nodded.
“Jason Gilson called and asked to come over, but he arrives, and something’s not right.”
“Such as?”
“Instead of his usual self-aggrandizing chattiness, he’s sullen and borderline uncommunicative. Which is fine, I guess, because we all have our moods.”
“Right, but for most of us our moods would brighten when arriving at your door.”
“And his always has. But tonight, after insisting we look at the stars from the balcony, he mentions your name.”
“In what context?”
“Said he saw you at the gas station.”
“He did. He didn’t look good. He was edgy.”
“As I said, something wasn’t right.”
“And you suspect he was using you to establish an alibi?”
“Maybe you really are a detective.”
“What’s he need cover from?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But after you figure that out, maybe you’ll tell me who the kid is.”
CHAPTER NINE
I checked on Game when I got back. He was asleep on the couch, which he hadn’t bothered to pull out. His left leg dangled off the edge, and he hugged the floral-print blanket to his bare chest. Poking out from beneath the blanket were his navy-blue-and-gold Oakville High perforated basketball shorts. His face was expressionless, and he was breathing slowly and deeply, but I couldn’t convince myself the kid was peaceful, not with the cards he was dealt.
I watched him sleep for a minute, and I began to change my opinion. Maybe he was sleeping soundly, dreaming of pizza and randy cheerleaders. Maybe he realized that this involuntary exile from his difficult circumstances was the way out he couldn’t admit he was looking for. I was probably rationalizing, but his actions supported my theory. He’d originally tried to escape by stealing my car, but the more I thought about how he went about it, the more I thought he’d overplayed his hand by asking about LoJack.
Why would he care that the cops could track the car if he intended to ditch it a few blocks away and disappear? When I’d given him the chance to make good on his threat to kill me, then escape, he’d done nothing. He hadn’t run and hadn’t shot me dead or in the foot. I’d thought he might be naïve enough to try to slip out of the house and attempt to thumb a ride. But he probably realized he’d be more likely to be picked up by a sheriff’s deputy than by a Malibu local looking to help out a Black teenager in the middle of the night.
Maybe he liked his new surroundings, however temporary. Maybe, as he lay on the couch in the movie star’s fancy home, he dreamed that the bleak, violent future he’d thought was inevitable didn’t have to happen.
The sun wasn’t far from ushering in another glorious Southern California day, so I figured I’d better try to get some rest. I thought about crashing in one of the guest rooms or on a couch or on a chaise on the balcony. However, I knew Amanda would be hurt—and would be sure to convey the depths of her hurt—if she didn’t wake up next to me. Resigned to my fate, I decided to postpone it. I opened my laptop and typed in ESPN.com to see how the Yankees had done (a 10-2 pummeling of the dreaded Bosox), then perused CNN.com. After skimming a few articles, I went to The Malibu Times website and saw this headline: Hollywood producer is apparent suicide. I clicked the link.
MALIBU — A movie producer was found dead late Friday night in his Malibu mansion when Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies raided the producer’s home in search of narcotics.
Chris Cerveris, 49, hanged himself with a climbing rope, according to Sergeant Lon Jeffries, spokesman for the sheriff’s department. Deputies found Cerveris hanging from a staircase railing in his 6,000-square-foot home in the 1100 block of Latigo Canyon.
Deputies arrived at Cerveris’ home at 10:35 p.m. after receiving an anonymous tip that he had recently taken possession of a shipment of cocaine and heroin, according to Jeffries, who added: “A large quantity of narcotics were found on the premises.”
Cerveris produced or co-produced more than a dozen movies in his 25 years in Hollywood, and he executive produced approximately a dozen others. In the 1990s, Cerveris co-produced a string of six movies that grossed more than $100 million each, including action-adventures and romantic comedies. Over the years, Cerveris and his producing partner, Marty Milford, helped launch the careers of some of cinema’s biggest stars, including Justin Billingsley and Amanda Bigelow, who worked with Billingsley in the Milford-Cerveris blockbuster “Blue Wedding.”
Cerveris is survived by three ex-wives and a brother, Keith Cerveris.
I stared at the screen until the words became smudges. Chris and I had been great friends for years. He was much less insecure than most people in the movie business—and people in general, I suppose. He possessed a confident sense of self that likely contributed to his aggressive nature and his exotic adventure travels. He and I had rock climbed together in Wyoming, rafted the Grand Canyon, and heli-skied in the Coast Mountains in British Columbia. We knew many of the same people and shared similar worldviews. We’d talked about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro together, and we did our best to hike, bike, fish, or kayak together once a week.
My thoughts raced, and my gut felt queasy. I went upstairs. As I brushed my teeth, I tried to figure out how The Malibu Times could run such a horseshit story. Chris was passionate about everything he was involved in. He collected antique arms, had the largest collection of vinyl albums I’d ever seen, and half of his four-car garage was filled with outdoor gear. He kept an expensive fishing boat and an even more expensive sailboat in slips in Marina del Rey. I never heard him say anything about being depressed. He was saddened by his divorces and was disappointed when his movies didn’t do well, but I knew far too much about depression, and Chris hadn’t been depressed.
And he wasn’t a drug dealer.
His life would have had to take a dramatic turn—a turn caused by a brain tumor, for instance—for the facts in that article to be true. I believed the dead part, but that was about it. Having formerly been a newspaper reporter, I knew when a story had been fed to the press, rather than having been reported by a member of it. This one smelled rotten, and the lack of a byline exacerbated the stench.
I gently climbed under the covers, and the warmth of the down comforter and of another human being felt nice because I hadn’t fully warmed up after skin diving. I looked at Amanda and remembered how comforting it was to watch her sleep. She slept like a carefree child, never tossing or lashing out, and never talking in her sleep, as I’m told I do. She’s never awakened and mentioned a nightmare to me, which I find amazing because the stresses she’s under—to continue to deliver hit after hit, to live up to the myth that the PR machines have created, to prove to herself and to the world that she is more than simply a product of good genes—have certainly contributed to her substance abuse over the years. Yet somehow these pressures don’t seep into her dreams. At least not that she’s admitted to me.
After debating whether to check if the LA Times website had Chris’ story yet, I decided to figure out why I was so upset by Amanda’s gift. Yes, she’d broken our pact, but by honoring it for seven years weren’t we acknowledging its existence daily? Wouldn’t it be natural for a partner’s deceased spouse to come up in conversation occasionally. Because Jami’s name never did, wasn’t she on the periphery of every conversation? I knew that most people wouldn’t understand a couple making an agreement such as ours, not while claiming to be “life partners” or “significant others” or any other pairing that doesn’t include the phrase “husband and wife.”
Jami was the elephant in the room, but I’d established my terms when Amanda and I first got together, and she’d agreed to them. I wasn’t willing or able to have another relationship like the one I had had with Jami, so I let Amanda know she could have what I could give, what was left, which, I was almost certain, would not be much. Although I wouldn’t consciously try to hold back my feelings, I knew myself fairly well, and I knew that some parts of me would never heal.
I wouldn’t lie to Amanda, belittle her, or humiliate her, and I wouldn’t intentionally hurt her. These were my terms. But I made no promise to love her, and she claimed to be okay with that. It turned out we were both wrong because she obviously wasn’t okay with only getting part of me, and I believed that what I felt for her approximated love. At the least, I cared for her enough not to leave her simply because she wasn’t my everything, and I knew that if I walked away, she would most likely kill herself, as she’d threatened to do many times.
My love for Jami had been the “I’d die for you” kind of love. Although that kind of all-consuming love probably isn’t healthy, it’s the kind that Jami and I had had for each other, so it’s what I knew love to be. Anything else must not be love, therefore. Or so I believed.
But I’d failed Jami, and she’d died as a result. The aftermath was so painful that I knew I couldn’t live through another period even half as bad.
CHAPTER TEN
I stared at the ceiling while lying next to Amanda, mourning Jami, missing her, and speculating about what might have been. If heaven exists, then she’s up there trying not to dismiss me as a failure. She would have expected me to be stronger, to have bounced back. To thrive. Otherwise, how could she have loved me as profoundly as she had? The love of her life had a backbone, ambition, but the man next to Amanda that night only existed. I don’t know who I’d have been had Jami lived, but I know I would’ve been more than I was that night.
I slipped out of bed, got dressed, headed downstairs, and stepped barefoot into the soft dew-damp sand. Apparently, I’d been tossing, turning, and reminiscing for longer than I thought because it was only moments before first light.
I told myself I’d come down to the beach to examine the damage the spear had caused to the kayak. But as I studied the shaft protruding through the hull and debated whether I should use pliers to try to yank the spear loose, I felt a tear run down my right cheek. Then my left. I leaned over, let the tears flow, sat in the sand, and fell apart. Everything hit me at once, and I don’t know how long I cried or how long Game watched me cry, but from the bottom step he said, “Couldn’t get it up? I hear it happens, you get old.”
“Yep, that’s it. All out of Viagra. As we know, a man defines himself solely by his cock.” Game walked over to where I sat and dropped down into the sand beside me.
“Ain’t your problem. I heard you and Amanda Bigelow banging like all-stars. You need Viagra with her, you gay.”
“Maybe that’s it,” I said as I put my hand on his knee. He jumped a foot sideways and yelled, “Shit, dawg. A brotha help a dude in a bad place and get felt up. Ain’t right.” We laughed.
I stood, wiped the sand from my pants and my hands, and said, “Come on, I’ll make you breakfast.”
Despite Game’s protests that he didn’t like fish, I sautéed the calico we’d caught in butter. I scrambled eggs well-done, the way he said he liked them, and poured him a glass of orange juice. On the assumption I’d need a couple gallons of coffee to make it through the day without having slept at all that night, I started the coffee first, then downed two mugs as I prepared breakfast. Game didn’t drink coffee, he said, and I dismissed this shortcoming as the ignorance of youth.
“You gonna tell me?” he asked between bites. We were seated at the table on the balcony, overlooking the ocean, watching the sun’s rays glide across the water as if being pulled across the sea. He wore basketball shorts and a black Oakville High School sweatshirt.
“Tell you what?”
“Why you crying.”
“How’s the fish?”
“Better than I thought. Spices make it edible.”
“Cajun spices. I put them on almost everything.”
“You ducking the question.”
“I cried because I just lost a good friend, and I miss my wife. She died.”
“How?”
“Bike accident.”
“How long ago?”
“Forever … and yesterday.”
“That how I feel ’bout Lawrence and Terrell. Some days something happens to me, and I think I can tell ’em ’bout it when I get home. Crazy, right?”
“Human, I think. I’ve learned to block out the conversations with Jami I have in my head. Although she gives great advice, I find it too painful to listen. I have to tune her out.”
He took a bite of eggs and looked at me thoughtfully. I’d dismissed Jami’s whispers in my head as the workings of my overwrought mind. I didn’t believe in ghosts, white light, or the ever-after. I barely believed in the here and now.
“Sometimes I kinda ask how Lawrence or Terrell woulda done things. I listen to their answers, then make my decision. But I listen first.”
I nodded and finished another mug of coffee.
“Gonna get the paper,” I said. I stood, walked through the house, opened the front door, walked outside, then across the driveway. The delivery driver usually hurled the L.A. Times to within a few feet of the front door, but that morning the paper sat in the gutter. Maybe the regular driver was out sick. I picked the paper up, pulled the plastic cover off, and scanned the front page. Nothing above the fold about Chris’ death, and nothing below it. I tucked the other sections under my arm and scanned the rest of the news section. No mention of Chris’ death. I opened the sports section, scanned the headlines, read the first five paragraphs of a story about collectors of rare baseball cards, then headed inside. I saw Amanda hand Game a cup of coffee.
“Good morning,” I said as I approached the kitchen.
“Morning,” she said. “I wanted to wake up next to you.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t sleep. I see you two have met.” I kissed Amanda on the cheek. Game sipped his coffee.
“Yes, Game was just telling me you killed something last night. How nice. And I can still smell it.”
“I saved you some.”
“None for me. I’m not feeling so good.”
“Doesn’t surprise me.”
“Don’t, Jack. Not now.”
I turned to Game. “Thought you don’t drink coffee?”
“When Amanda Bigelow gives you something, you take it. She put cream and sugar in it. Not bad.”
I sat and pretended to read the paper. Game motioned for the sports page, and I passed it to him. Amanda sipped her coffee and looked out at the ocean. She did that for two minutes. None of us said a word.
Game broke the silence. “You want me to get lost so you can fight?”
“Yes, please,” Amanda said.
“No, Game, I don’t intend to fight. This is between Amanda and me, and we’ll deal with it later. You and I are going to head to town to see what’s developed, after we talk to Big Bill.” I pushed away from the table.
“Who’s Big Bill?”
“The guy who invented the kayak you shot.”
As Game and I approached Big Bill’s house from the sand, Big Bill was sitting on a railroad tie, in the shade that the large, elevated deck created, about forty yards in front of the house he shared with his wife, Sadie. He sat about six feet from one of two upright bourbon barrels as he tossed one stick after another toward the mouth of the nearest one. Behind him, hanging from the rafter farthest from the ocean, were two Wave Skimmers, one orange two-person and a red solo kayak.
“Isn’t that supposed to be a peach basket?” I asked as Game and I approached.
“I’m sure Dr. Naismith would understand,” Big Bill said. “Besides, my shooting percentage is higher this way.” He smiled and said, “It’s good to see you, Jack. Who’s your friend?”
Big Bill stood to greet us. He was seventy-two, still stood six-six and was huge, the way former offensive lineman frequently become. He had played left tackle at Santa Monica High School and tight end at Santa Monica City College. I made the introductions, and they shook hands, both saying “nice to meet you” at the same time. Game, however, added, “sir.”
We chatted for a few minutes about Bill’s gout and his wife’s inevitable slink toward nothingness, her Lewy body dementia even causing Sadie to forget her own name, let alone Bill’s.
Because I could think of nothing to add that would refute the fact that life is inherently sad, I told Big Bill why we stopped by.
“We had an accident last night with the double Wave Skimmer. I shot the boat with a spear, and I was hoping you’d know how to repair the holes. I thought I’d simply fill them with caulk but figured I better ask you first.”
“Sadly, Jack, that won’t do it. Well, it will temporarily, but it won’t last more than a couple days, probably. The Wave Skimmer is made of a complex synthetic polymer—called Hydroglass, which is proprietary—and in order to repair an invasive breach, one must use Hydroglass in the repair process, or else the agent simply won’t adhere in the long term. Sun, wind, and water will make the holes reappear. You’ll have to take the Skimmer to the shop.”
“Where?”
“Compton.”
“How’d you choose Compton to produce kayaks? Not an obvious choice.”
“The warehouse there was in such bad shape in the early eighties, the owner said I could have a year of free rent if I fixed it up enough to use it. As hand-to-mouth as I was then, that was the break I needed to launch a business and have it succeed. As the business grew, we expanded elsewhere, but I hung on to the space for nostalgic reasons, and I made sure the landlord received a large thank-you bonus for his initial kindness. Eventually, I bought the building.”
“Makes sense. We’re headed that way anyway. Thanks for your help.”
He shook our hands and turned back toward his barrel. As we walked away, he muttered something I couldn't understand. “What was that, Big Bill?”
“Nothing. Just talking to my past.” He muttered something else I didn’t understand.
Game and I walked back toward the house along the deserted beach. He said, “He’s a sad man, Jack. Kinda like you.”
“Sad, yes, but not like me. He’s been married for about forty-five years to a wonderful woman, a true partner whose side he rarely left. They were inseparable, and now he spends his days pining for a woman who no longer exists, not in a form either of them can recognize.”
